Instructor Response

Impressive and excellent work. Congratulations. You are a very good writer. Comments below do not indicate mistakes, but are suggestions for you consider as you continue your writing.

‘P’ta humph.’ Harmon Collander slumped to the ground with a hiss of pain. The blue-light strobe accurate and efficient had found its target. (This is awkward syntax in a paragraph of rapid action requiring prose with momentum. As you have it, you have two ideas: description of image light, and then a comment on the nature of strobes, which is rather abstract and nonspecific, and which you might argue is enhancement of description. But always strive for the concrete, be brief and accurate, especially in action scenes. Consider something like this: “The blue-light strobe quickly found Collander’s twitching body and wide-eyed stare.” Not great, but short and to the point, and expresses, I believe, everything you have in your sentences.) Boner at his most lethal. He turned over the body with a brutal kick. He kicked over the twitching body with his left foot and grimaced into Collander’s wide-eyed stare.

‘Where is it?’ he demanded, turning and sauntering (Let him saunter; even if he has to turn, no need to express it.) to the window, his weapon casually by his side.

Collander slunk further into the corner, a snake under the woodpile of chairs,( a confusing image; if you want a metaphor here, create a better one.) his movements awkward with the electricity.  (Electricity doesn’t seem awkward to me and it spoils the nice momentum of the prose.)

‘T… the money?’ He finally got the words out. Use “finally said.”  Look for ways to avoid wordiness.

Boner’s hollow laugh echoed hollowly echoed in the deserted warehouse. This is good scene setting.

‘No. This is a new game. There’s more at stake than the money.’

He Boner (avoid any possibility of confusion with pronoun usage) checked his mobile before levelling the stun gun at Collander, watched him squirm against the rotting cartons, wariness in his eyes.

‘We can do this the easy way…,’ he said as if imitating a B grade actor, ‘or the hard way.’

Rain pummelled the metal roof. Boner’s eyes flicked momentarily (All flicking is inherently brief, no need for redundancy) when the wind slammed a swinging door closed somewhere behind them.

The urgent bip, bip of the phone stabbed through in the din of the storm. (Keep it short. Don’t strive for too much. It leads to overwriting.)  Boner answered, a slight (cliché) quaver in his voice.

‘Yes… Got it… OK.’ His eyes never moved from his quarry.

‘Your master’s voice?’

‘Fuck you!’ His words He delivered a backhander that snapped Collander’s head sideways.

But The volts grounded  (simple past better here than progressive passive). He turned like a cornered cat, (not a good metaphor, it’s hard to imagine) his Spit hitting Boner on the cheek just under the left eye.

Nicely done. Watch for excessive adjectives and adverbs, especially if they don’t add much to the prose—that is, characterization and plot progression. Study metaphor construction, then use only your very best. A bad metaphor in fiction is like a inferior ballet performance; it’s just not very enjoyable.

Thanks for the submission. And all the best. WHC